So ever since the Xeon 5500's were announced I've been waiting to see if there will be an "enthusiast" class 5500 board - aka Skulltrail II

I've hear various rumors that there is a Skulltrail II in the works, and other rumors that Intel claims there will not be a Skulltrail II, so I don't know what to believe. I've been looking at all the various 5500 boards, in particular the "workstation" class boards, but nothing really seems to fit what I'm looking for.

The Intel S5520SC comes close to what I want, and I'm wondering if that's the closest to a Skulltrail II we're going to see? In particular the BIOS does not seem to have any capability for overclocking. It may also be that the board itself is not suitable for overclocking. Some questions:

Can this board be overclocked? If not in the BIOS, via an OS application?

The board is an EEB SSI form factor. Will it fit in a standard EATX case? Are the holes for the standoffs compatible? Are there any issues with the power connectors? Are there any other issues to worry about?

Can anyone recommend any other motherboards suitable for a 5500 dual processor configuration and enthusiast class usage?

Skulltrail (Intel D5400XS) was a great board, but a failure in terms of sales. AMD's "4x4" platform, which Skulltrail was developed to compete against. was also a failure. In short, the market for "enthusiast" (overclockable) dual-socket boards is too small. There has been and will be no successor to Skulltrail per se.

No dual socket 1366 boards offer CPU overclocking features.

EDIT: Umm... cough, cough.... with respect to a successor to Skulltrail... apparently I was wrong...

Message was edited by: bofors New information about a possible "Skulltrail 2" came my way. 5.11.10